John 7

John 7:1-8

Section 3. (John 7:1-53; John 8:1.)The Spirit in the believer the manifestation of the glory of the unknown Christ. The connection between this section and the last is very evident. As we have already seen, life being so largely the subject matter in this gospel, the Spirit of God is necessarily connected with this as the Communicator and power of the life. Thus in the first subdivision we had life in the first two sections, and in the third the Spring of living water; in the present one, we have had in like manner life in the first two sections, and now, in the third, we have again the living water: but it is here not simply springing up within the believer, but pouring out from him in the world “rivers of living water.” The world at large is not changed by it, but an oasis is created in the desert, a prophecy of what is yet to come for the whole world. Thus the feast that brings the Lord at this time to Jerusalem is the feast of tabernacles, Israel’s joyful celebration in the land of her wanderings past, and with which the blessing of the earth is concurrent. But this has not come, and He who can alone bring it in for them is rejected by His own. Thus He goes up only to substitute as it were Pentecost for Tabernacles. The blessing is greater and of a higher order than anything the latter can show, but it is individual, not national; and still less world-wide. For the blessing itself implies a Christ no longer present among men, but, according to the words which we have just heard uttered, “gone up where He was before.” We have heard too by what way. Death has come on Him on whom it had no claim: a voluntary, sacrificial death, and His glory for ever; but the sign also of His rejection by men, a rejection which would even have been complete, had not the Father’s gift secured a people to His Son. Thus then we have been brought to where we are doctrinally in the present chapter: the world still rejecting Him; the Father acting for the glory of the Son; the Spirit manifested in the world itself in those who have believed on Jesus, the Witness of His unseen glory: these are the characteristics of that to which we have now come.

1. The state of the world is that which is first revealed, the Lord Himself in what complete solitude in the midst of it, without sympathy even from His human kindred, and the professing people of God only to be classed with the world: going on indeed with their feasts, the empty forms of a piety which for the mass does not exist, and which have become therefore the signs of hardness and levity of heart. What a witness against them is that history of divine deliverances which their feast of tabernacles commemorates, while those who are especially the clusterers round the holy places then, “they of Judea,” are specially marked out here as those in open and deadly hostility to the Lord of life, the Son of Him they worship. The Lord therefore does not go up at first, or openly, to the feast. He is neither Lord there, nor even welcome Guest. Nor is the time come for His open manifestation to the world, which hates Him for His faithfulness. Thus He abides solitary in His unique and perfect Manhood among men estranged from Him by His perfection. 2.(1) At the feast contradictory murmurings are heard about Him, some for, some against; suppressed however by the fear of those of Judea, who in all decisions concerning questions of authority and teaching had the upper hand. In the middle of the feast, Jesus who had come up privately to it, appeared in the temple and with the authority that belonged to Him, began to teach. Amazed at the knowledge which plainly He had not acquired at the ordinary schools of rabbinic learning, which it in no wise resembled, they inquire how He has come by it. He answers that His doctrine is not His own, but His who sent Him. He has not learned of men, nor put forth what was simply of His own mind; but what He taught He had learned of the Father in that abiding intercourse with Him in which He lived (John 8:28). And He adds that they too might know for themselves whether His doctrine were of God, or of a man’s mind merely. They would know this, if they were but willing to do the Father’s will: for the spirit of obedience clears out of the soul the earth-vapors that obscure the heavens; he who has not heart-felt desire for the truth will scarcely learn it. This is itself simple, if only we believe that God can certify the truth to His creatures, and that He cares enough for them to desire that they should have it. But, simple as it is, if we believe it, what does it reveal with regard to the condition, not of the world merely, but of the children of God today? The various and conflicting views of Christians as to almost every Christian truth, how are they to be accounted for, with the Bible open before us, and the Spirit of truth to lead us into all truth? What heart-searching should it not give us, to learn how far we are really willing to have the truth -the whole truth, at whatever cost. Another test the Lord gives here: “He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh His glory who sent him, he is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” This is a personal test, as the other was the doctrinal. And here was the double witness to the glorious Speaker: who but Himself could have faced the application of these by the watchful multitudes that were around Him? (2) He turns now openly upon His adversaries, to warn them how thoroughly the law to which they clung witnessed against them. He charges them plainly with their murderous designs upon His life; a charge which the Galileans, ignorant of what the Judeans were meditating, impute to the diseased fancies of a demoniac. The Lord goes back to the miracle which had aroused their malignant animosity. Circumcision, though incorporated by Moses in the law he gave, was yet not what came from Moses but from the fathers; it had another character, in fact, from law, as connected with those through whom God in His grace gave them the promises. Thus circumcision itself is by the apostle afterwards (Romans 4:11) shown to be the seal of the righteousness of faith in Abraham; and he receives it when his body is now dead and fruit from him naturally impossible, the very time of its reception thus corresponding with its spiritual meaning. This circumcision then, belonging to a period before law, and in its meaning the very opposite, is by the law itself preferred to the law, -that is, the commandment of the sabbath. Thus grace had, by the law itself, precedence above the law. Now the impotent man was healed by the selfsame grace, his body now dead like Abraham’s. Grace, not law, had had the priority in divine order, as was evident; and law, as an incompatible thing, could not be added to grace when it did come (see Galatians 3:19-26), but came to make man’s need of grace apparent. Sickness and death having come in through sin, only grace could heal the impotent; and this we have seen to be the principle which the miracle in all its details discloses. “Take up thy bed and walk” asserts the superiority of grace to law, as did the circumcision of a man upon the sabbath day. No doubt it required, as the Lord shows here, not to judge according to the appearance; but this is the true judicial spirit, and always necessary for righteous judgment. (3) Again there is a stir among the crowd at His boldness, and on the part of some of Jerusalem, who know full well what is in the hearts of the rulers with regard to Him, an expression of astonishment that they do not interfere. Could it be possible, they ask each other, that a revulsion of mind has come, and that the rulers are beginning to recognize this Man as the Christ? But no: surely that were impossible; they knew Him and His origin, and there was no room for such mystery as they expected to attach to the coming of Messiah. Evidently to them He was but the simple Galilean, the Nazarene; and all that had taken place at. Bethlehem and Jerusalem had slipped entirely out of unretentive minds which cared too little to retain it. While they were murmuring such things, the voice of Him of whom they were speaking penetrated to them where they were, not to assert His birth in David’s city or of David’s line, nor to recall the vision of angels and the quest of the magi, graved in the hearts of many by the slaughter of the babes.

Nay, He allows that they know Him in their mere external way (for of nothing else were they speaking) sufficiently: He did not propose to supplement that knowledge, which for them would still be ineffectual. That which they needed to know He had already declared, and the way to know it, but they recognized not divine truth, nor therefore His divine mission. He was from God; but they knew not that God from whom He was. And still the hand of God kept back the angry outburst that was ready to break out against Him: Master of all circumstances till the appointed hour when He would yield Himself to the divine will which He came to accomplish. Moreover those quiet penetrating words were gaining ground with many of the multitude, who were asking if, when Christ came, He could be expected to do more signs than the Man they were refusing had already done. (4) A more direct effort to take Him is the result of this, the chief priests and Pharisees sending officers to apprehend Him. The Lord, with perfect understanding of all that is going on, tells them that it needs not: He is going away -back to Him who had sent Him into the world. Days would come when at last in vain they would seek Him; and into that place into which He was going they could never come: -a solemn warning; but which they fling off from them in their scorn. He has indeed spoken of God as the One that sent Him, and then the warning is plain; but they will not have it so. No: He must be going to the dispersed among the Gentiles, and to teach the Gentiles; and this too was to be, though not according to their thought. Little did they realize that Lo-ammi (“not my people”) was to be written upon them in the time soon to come, in a sterner fashion than ever yet had been. But beyond, in the place from which He had come, to which He was going to return, there could be no Father’s welcome for the rejectors of His Son. 3. He was going away, therefore. “He was in the world, and the world had been made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He had come to His own, and His own received Him not.” In that which was considered the chief of their festivals, His voice was heard only as a strange and dissonant sound. He was going away now to where He was before. The last day, the great day of the feast, had come; and those who had gathered to it from all parts of the world were soon to separate. It was a day of rest and of holy convocation, of gathering, not of scattering; and as an eighth day,* the commencement of a new week, it spoke of eternity, of an eternal reunion, when all servile work should be at an end for ever, sin and its consequences being together put away. It corresponds with this really, that dwelling in booths was only for seven days; the eighth speaking of the entrance into the land.
Another ceremony, but which has no authority from Scripture, ceased also on the eighth day, -the pouring out of water drawn from the pool of Siloam. “This,” says Lange, “was the celebration of the miraculous springs which God opened for the people on their pilgrimage through the wilderness. But because the eighth day marked their entrance into Canaan, the water-drawing ceased. On this day the springs of the promised land gave their waters to the people: an emblem of the streams of spiritual blessing which Jehovah had promised to His people.” They were still in the land, -a broken remnant of them, under the Gentile domination: and where now were those spiritual streams, the “living waters” that were to “go out from Jerusalem in summer and in winter”? (Zechariah 14:8). Centuries had come and gone, and there was no sign even yet of the fulfilment. The ceremonies survived, but with the heart-sickness of deferred hope. Seasons of expectancy had passed away, fading quietly into the ordinary vacant dullness, or sometimes crushed out fiercely under an armed heel. Now there was to some the breath of another revival, although the voice of him who had first announced it had been silenced in Herod’s prison. But John had given place to a Greater; and signs and wonders that might well be Messianic were waking up expectation from Galilee to Jerusalem. Yet why did He not use His power after another fashion than merely in feeding or healing the multitudes? why did He not rally around Him the strength of Israel, and strike off their fetters? The booths were gone; the wilderness-journey had come to an end; the eighth day had brought them to the land: with their Messiah in their midst, would not the land, in all the breadth and fulness of the promise to Abraham, be before them now? Yet He had spoken of going away, and to a place inaccessible to those who should seek Him and not find Him. What could all this mean, they must have questioned, many of them in their bewilderment, and found no answer. But “in the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any one thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” “Of those who had heard Him,” says Edersheim, “none but must have understood that, if the invitation were indeed real, and Christ the fulfilment of all, then the promise had its deepest meaning, that he who believed on Him would not only receive the promised fulness of the Spirit, but give it forth to the fertilizing of the barren waste around. It was truly the fulfilment of the Scripture-promise, not of one, but of all: that in Messianic times the Nabhi (prophet), literally the ‘weller forth,’ viz. of the divine, should not be one or another select individual, but He would pour out on all His handmaidens and servants of His Holy Spirit, and thus the moral wilderness of this world be changed into a fruitful garden. Indeed, this is expressly stated in the Targum, which thus paraphrases Isaiah 44:3 : ‘Behold, as the waters are poured out on arid ground, and spread over the dry soil, so will I give the Spirit of My holiness on thy sons, and blessing on thy children’s children.’ What was new to them was that all this was treasured up in the Christ, that out of His fulness men might receive, and grace for grace. And yet even this was not quite new.” The interpretation is given by John himself on account of the importance of it: “But this He said concerning the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The fulfilment carries us on to Pentecost, when the Spirit of God came in witness to the glory of the rejected Saviour. And we must not suppose, because of the reference to the Old Testament, that in the manner of its fulfilment there was nothing but what the prophets of old declared. Peter’s quotation of Joel at the time when the Spirit came shows how really the promise of our Lord could fulfil the Old Testament prophet. It does not show that there was not a deeper and greater blessing in what took place at Pentecost. The Lord’s words here speak of the effect only -“rivers of living water” flowing out of the believer. The evangelist explains that this would follow the reception of the Spirit after Christ should be glorified.

And the Lord’s previous words assure us that this would be in the day of His absence, not of His presence; although even yet it was assured to them that He would return if only (nationally) they repented. They did not; and the mystery of the Church came gradually out. Of that there is nothing here: all is individual; and even as to the individual, we must connect what is said here with what had been said to the Samaritan woman, before we can understand that the reception of the Spirit means that indwelling presence which is the abiding spring within the man from which these “rivers” issue. For the full truth and bearing of the doctrine we must look elsewhere. But where else shall we find so wonderful a picture of what the man indwelt of the Spirit is in the world as witness of the glory of His rejected Lord? As we have to say of kindred utterances in this Gospel, it seems too highly drawn for a picture of any save the rare exceptions among Christian men. But let us accept the reproof of this, and try rather to realize what a man indwelt of the Spirit would be normally as that. The Spirit of God -God -dwelling within one: the Living Centre of the practical life; the Enlightener of mind and conscience; the Energy of the affections and the will: all power, all wisdom in Him who as Vice-gerent of Christ has come to hold me for Christ against all that in a world opposed to Him would hinder my witness! what competency, what fulness at all times accessible to me does all this imply! A perpetual spring in a vessel must needs overflow the vessel in which it is, the smallness of which is no limit to the spring itself. When once the vessel is full, all the power of the spring will manifest itself in the overflow. Hence, (if we think of the spring and not of the vessel,) “rivers of living water” are not too much to predicate of the outflow from this divine Source of blessing within the soul, which, first filling to complete satisfaction the soul itself, must surely then flow out for the need of others. This is the Lord’s own witness to the gift He gives, who cannot err in the estimate He makes of it. When we realize what it is, we cannot think it to be too high. Our experimental knowledge will depend indeed upon our practical subjection to the Spirit indwelling us; but how blessed to know that this is to be gained in so simple a way, and that this is the picture the Lord can give us of the normal Christian. 4. From this we go back to see the world in which He is, and which does not know Him. Reasonings there are many, and contrary thoughts; false tests, and true tests falsely applied; the failure of His enemies to apprehend Him, failure from the timidity of the half-decided, as Nicodemus. Amid all this they scatter away from Him, every one to his own, and leave Him. He, solitary in the world He made, He to His solitude in the mount of Olives.